HBO’S DEADWOOD COMPLETE SERIES BLUE-RAY CATALOG LAUNCHED SOON

CHICAGO – Just in time for holidays, the excellent HBO’s “Deadwood” was chosen to introduce the complete series Blu-ray catalog for the major television networks over the last twenty years. Very few HBO series are available in the full range of HD sets HBO (“Band of Brothers,” “Rome”, “The Pacific”) and all the fans of “The Sopranos,” “The Wire” and “Six Feet Under “may finally be the season next vacation, this masterpiece belongs to David Milch.

The 36 episodes of Milch’s brilliant deconstruction of the TV Western have been segmented into 13 discs – four per season and a bonus disc. Basically, this is what the HD translation was published two years ago on the standard disk. If you are still dreaming, it is often said that the film, which would apply to all ends of the canceled-too-soon as the program is needed to keep on dreaming.

One of the best programs of the ’00s is named after the real American frontier town that serves as the dramatic backdrop for a convergence of law, greed, love, the past, and the future. Deadwood was the first melting pot, a place where businessmen, soldiers, Chinese laborers, prostitutes, and gunfighters all struggled to survive. Milch’s incredible drama was riveting from first episode to last, not just a great TV Western but one of the best of its genre of any medium, film and fiction included.

“Deadwood” won multiple awards, including Emmys (all technical although actors Brad Dourif, Robin Weigert, and Ian McShane were nominated) and a Peabody Award, and was massively critically-acclaimed but it fell victim to something of a house cleaning at HBO as they were trying to find their identity at the end of the ’00s and cutting high-budget programming. Series like “Carnivale,” “Rome,” and “Deadwood” buy prednisone with no prescription were all cut tragically-short.

Everything you’d find in the individual season sets have been imported to the complete series set along with the new special features available on the 2008 release. The best of that set was “The Meaning of Endings,” a 23-minute discussion with Milch about the controversial end of the show in which the creator walks the set and talks about where he was planning to go in season four. The other features on the extra disc include “The Real Deadwood: Out of the Ashes”, “Q&A With Cast and Creative Team”, “Deadwood 360 Tour”, and “Al Swearengen Audition Reel (as performed by Titus Welliver)”

What more is there to say about “Deadwood” other than that I still miss it? I like what HBO is doing nowadays but they don’t seem to be taking the creative risks that they once did with shows like this one or “Carnivale.” Let’s face it — “True Blood” is fun but it’s a relatively-obvious hit with its mix of sexuality and the genre trend of the day. “Deadwood” was daring, something that I’m not sure HBO is as much as it used to be. It will be again. But we’ll always have these three seasons to remind us of what can be done when a brilliant TV creator is given creative freedom and when a network takes chances.